


Nothing

by say_lene



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 12:57:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18604975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/say_lene/pseuds/say_lene
Summary: Ciper Nine makes her decision to work against the Empire.





	Nothing

"What did you do?"

Watcher X's face is still dirty. Cipher Nine has never been the creative type, but this really takes the cake. Apparently, her broken brain can't produce him clean-faced.

Mind control. Brain damage. Inevitable.

"I fought the Star Cabal. I killed them all, and I took their codex."

"Why?"

A good question. Something about the Empire. Or the Republic. Or both.

"To stop them from killing each other." That was it.

"I must say - it was an inspired move, giving the codex to the SIS. A pity there's no Intelligence left to regret your brainwashing."

Cipher Nine throws her forearm over her eyes. Her head hurts. Her skin feels funny when she frowns - like she's been lying in the sun too long, and she's bleaching white like paper.

She still sees Hunter's image dancing on the inside of her eyelids. He's clutching at his side, bleeding from a wound no one can see. He's still _him,_ inside her head, because the woman he turned into is a stranger. One moment it's him, one moment it's _her_ , and one moment it's Cipher Nine herself - laughing hysterically, and crumbling into bleached-white bones.

Because it's gone. All of it. She's got nothing to fight for, nothing to love. The Empire she thought she'd die for never existed in the first place.

"Why did you kill him, then?"

For no reason at all, other than that she hated him. Hated him and loved him, because in all the ways that mattered... he was her.

"The Minister will hang. The rest of Intelligence will disappear, or be absorbed into various Sith powerbases. You don't know what to do now." Watcher X is still utterly deadpan. "You don't know who you are."

Nothing to fight for. Nothing to love.

"Hunter said this was what real freedom feels like."

"I wouldn't know."

She can't help it. She laughs. She remembers standing there in the Mezenti Spaceport, her blaster pressed to X's head. She remembers feeling _certain._

"I'm going to make them lose," she whispers.

Suddenly, X's voice is in her ear. "Repeat it."

"I'm going to make them _lose._ " She feels a new pressure, like a stone sitting on her throat. "I'm going to take the Sith Empire apart, even if it kills me."

Watcher X is, for the first time, smiling.

"It probably will."


End file.
